We Contain Landscapes
Eros and Sorrow
lance every boat anchored in
memory's
harbor. Offshore, someone is
moaning
in swells that unswell. Cacophony
of bells. Bowl of honey pelvis
rocked to pleasure, rocked to tears.
I'm crying after sex. Kettles going
off
and off - the arrows of that
sound could puncture steel.
I pour slowly, opening a curtain
in the back of mind.
Out the window, the diving swallows
thieve my periphery
with ceaseless flight
I came from this theft
of what cannot be mine. Not time
or rivers. Even my devotions
refuse possession.
Tiny, entangled butterflies chart
a constellation around my head,
circumventing the lens.
The oak on the bluff has a hole in it
like an exposed heart I wanted to make
myself small enough to climb into.
But trees do not need hearts.
I'm carving a face into the stump
in my sternum before it splinters
to kindling. I'm harvesting
nettles from forest half-sunk
in my ribs. Marsh in mouth,
a hurricane wept into 29 tabs open.
I'd draw you a map if it would not
divide.
We contain landscapes.
They do not belong to us.
Patrycja Humienik